Sunday, July 25, 2010

Radio Anthrocide was pleased as punch to provide what DJ Timothy feels is a superb overview of the remarkable permutations of the Swedish Rock scene in the late 1960's and early 70's. Certainly, they had things covered: Improv Drone Psych (Parson Sound), Straight-up catchy Pop sounds (Blonde), super-fat Hendrix-esque power Psych (Freddy Lindquist and Mecki Mark Men), the truly bizarre (the International Harvester family of bands, including the great Arbete Och Fritid) and superbly esoteric knob-pulling Electronic exegeses (the great Ralph Lundsten and Ragnar Grippe). As I got down to the last few days and put the final set-list together, I realized...Sweden really is the baddest hard-rocking country on the planet. Listen to RA#11 and you'll see what I mean.

Also contributions from Nordic Neighbors Finland (the outstanding Elonkorjuu, here very live and splendidly sloppy and w/ a remarkably aggressive guitar solo from Jukka Syrenius) as well as Junipher Greene and Ruphus from Norway and the splendidly all-out Proggish sounds of keyboard legend Sven Grunberg of Estonia. This was a fun show to do and I trust you'll find it to your listening pleasure; you'll also get to hear some played-rarely-outside-of-Sweden "Progg" (note second "G") from Leftist Scandi-moonbats Nationalteatern. A really good short film on that movement (which still stirs passions for and against in Swedish 70's Rock circles) can be found here and is well-worth your time. At any rate, that's the catchiest song about Jack The Ripper I've ever heard; even if it is somehwere between Neil Diamond and Stealers Wheel. Enjoy the show and check in next week for RA#12, which will be all about Progressive Rock. - TKR

Friday, July 23, 2010

At Left: A band you will definitely NOT be hearing on RA#11, Swedish Prog And Psych. One of the great national insults ever suffered by any nation, Abba does NOT in any way represent the genius of the Stockholm scene and its relentless rocking.

This week, Radio Anthrocide journeys to the far frozen North, where translucent pubic hair and gelatinous fish are an everyday occurrence (and hopefully part of the diet) and the people of Sweden make their claim to being the hardest rocking race on Earth. I had this one pegged from the time Jeff agreed to give me a show on Radio23- no doubt I was going to do a Sweden Rock program, no doubt at all. But only in the past week as I finalized the setlist did I realize just how epic and all-consuming was the scope of the Swedish rock sound, ca. the early 70's. Springing from seemingly one or two ur bands that provided the musicians for dozens after the originals broke up, the Swedish scene was both cannibalistic and incestuous; but man, the results speak very highly for kin fucking kin. Tons of great bands sprung from the original, anarchic Psych scene- centered around the Parson Sound, who split and branched into, eventually, bands including International Harvester and Trad Gras Och Stenar. The Mecki Mark Men opened for Jimi Hendrix and Algarnas Tradgard took things to the Cosmos; and Sweden was home to a unique Left-leaning bunch of musicians collectively known as playing "Progg" (note the second "g") which ran the gamut from Country sounds to Protest Folk. We'll be hearing a little bit of all of that tomorrow night on RA. As well, RA#11 pays notice to the genius Fusion Jazz scene that erupted from the Stockholm clubs, and since the other Scandinavian countries also had some great bands...we'll be hearing from a few of them as well. Including an epic Prog track from Sven Gruneberg's awesome Estonian creation, Mess.

I am already proclaiming this the best Radio Anthrocide ever. An entire other show could have been made just from the acts who split from November (featuring one of the great vocalists of the era, Christer Stalbrandt) and Mecki and Parson; as it stands, there is enough of the Rock to please the most demanding of Hard Heads. If you miss it as it happens, that's ok; the Podcast will be up by Sunday. But for god's sakes don't miss it altogether; no doubt, this will be the best compilation and avalanche of Swedish Rock ever made. A heavy statement- but I just listened to it altogether, and there is no doubt that's what I have here. - TKR

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

At Left: War was declared on Bad Progressive Rock music last year and it was this image- now iconic in the Bad Prog community- which heralded the "no prisoners" mentality of the ringleaders of the insurrection against shit Prog, Timothy Ready and Dr. Micah Moses. Truly one of the most memorable and defiant designs in the history of the struggle against Keith Emerson's rampant ego.

I would like to mention to readers of this blog that Radio Anthrocide was not the first shot across the bow of conformity and mediocrity with the express intent of crushing- with finality- the crippling effects of the Progressive Rock Industrial Complex (PRIC) and the subsumed and etiolated state their emasculating middle-mind conservatism has left Progressive Rock to wallow in and die. Since last year, myself and Dr. Micah Moses of Brooklyn, NYC have been waging war against Bad Prog at the Progressive Rock Hall of Infamy, lauded (correctly) as the first and only website devoted entirely to the study of Bad Progressive Rock. In that time, I have received accolades and death threats, nods of encouragement and the most infantile and vitriol-laden philippics ever conjured from the nest of basement-dwelling, Yoohoo-drinking psychopaths who make up the average Porcupine Tree fanclub. That battle being largely won- all the Yes fans have slinked off in ignominy having been duly routed by the torrent of caustic and withering verbiage thrown at them by your humble correspondent, of which no defense is possible since, in fact, it is a well-known fact that Yes FUCKING SUCKS- I have turned my attentions to managing my show and running this blog. Still, I'm very proud of the writing that I did pursuant to killing off Bad Prog, and also the collaboration of Dr. Moses- who himself is a critic and misanthrope of the very first rank, sort of an aloof Voltaire to my more garrulous and splenetic Schopenhauer, if you will. There is- literally- no website like it on the whole of the Internets; we invented Bad Prog, and as my Prog Empire grows...you can bet there will be a few victory laps taken at the expense of everybody who ever went to a Spock's Beard concert and came out saying "those guys are better than Crimson". The PRHOI is a reality check for all of those losers, and one that hits like a two-by-four at the base of the brain of the middle mind. It is worth noting all of this- my Empire- started there.

On another note...I would like to mention that one of the nicest things to ever happen in my life occurred just the other day. The good folks at Prog Not Frog- simply one of the two or three most important and best-run music blogs on the whole Internets- have declared RA a "Cool Place", and if you look at the list of links they have chosen to include in that realm of Progressive coolness...that's pretty select company, friends. I was both thrilled and honored, and hope that the tens of thousands of people who go to PNF every week stop by and download a show. Because RA aims to be the very best Progressive Rock radio show in the world, regardless of broadcasting format; and I truly believe we are on our way to being just that.

Check PNF out and make sure to join their forum; it's astonishing what people have to bring to the table knowledge-wise, and the vast Universe of amazing music you can find there. Cheers, and make sure to listen to this week's show dedicated to Swedish Progressive and Psychedelic Rock, as always on Radio23 at Cascade Community Radio, Saturday night at 8pm PST. - TKR

Sunday, July 18, 2010

At Left: Paul Naschy as Polish nobleman Waldemar Daninsky, about to be killed off (yet again...) in the Spanish Horror "classic" Night Of The Werewolf- one of the silliest of the Daninsky series (there were at least 12 of them) but, of course...they're ALL enjoyable in their own way. Also- note the "death mask" of Senor Molina's here; looks curiously like the prototype for the most horrific Prog moment of all, no?

Radio Anthrocide celebrated its 10th show Saturday night by going out of its way to alienate its listeners. Three-plus solid hours of terrorizing music from film scores, the rampant horror of RIO at its most rebarbative and beautiful, and of course...a visit from Igor Wakhevitch, without whom it is increasingly apparent an RA show on any theme would be woefully inadequate. For those not versed in his incredibly bizarre music, Igor studied under classical composer Messiaen and- as another reviewer has remarked- could best be classified as unclassifiable, a "French Ralph Lundsten" (that's particularly apt, I think) and has been almost completely forgotten by modern music. I am on a one man crusade to rectify this situation (DJ Micah of Public Sensory Radio actually started the crusade, but I knew nothing about his efforts until recently) and will continue to play the Igor oeuvre until the man gets the respect he deserves. I would have to say that as of now, considering all of the work- including Etre Dieu with Salvador Dali and the closest the man came to a "commercial" record- 1979's Kraftwerk-inspired Let's Start- Igor is my very favorite avant-garde composer of all. His music is a freakshow of distemper, spatial-dislocation, repetition, and what a reviewer elsewhere has called a desire "to spend the majority of his time making music designed to fuck with people's heads". Absolutely. There's nothing quite like Igor, and tonight RA played the first side to my favorite record of his, Hathor, though I would also like to point out that Docteur Faustis also an absolute classic- that, yes, will definitely fuck with your head.

Other things of note from Saturday's show include a frenzied and frenetic piece of Electronica by Thomas Bangalter from what remains the all-time worst date movie ever, Gaspar Noe's 2002 bit of French sadism and art house navel gazing, Irreversible. RA also finally managed to play some Univers Zero- one of my absolute favorite bands- who, due to the incredible difficulty of classifying Chamber Rock, have been left out until now. I decided to start at the very pit of the infernal, playing the full 25-minute chamber of horrors called "La Faulx" ("The Scythe"- I think the song is about death and stuff). It was also fun to have an excuse to play the Japanese band Cosmos Factory in their entirety with as perfect an atmospheric piece of music as I've ever heard- one of the rare and few Rock "tone poems" I know of, 1973's remarkably enjoyable An Old Castle Of Transylvania. This is an absolute feast for fans of the Hammond organ, and there are moments of lush and disquieting Mellotron use as well; a very beautiful album from a band that had a completely different sound with each new release.

The weekly "mystery" of an RA broadcast was provided with a track by The Beautiful- whom the story goes is actually the Soft Machine, and that the track "Walter's Dream" was actually stolen from them some time in 1967 by a sleazy LA producer looking to cash in on the Psychedelia crazy and who took the stolen material back to Hollywood on the next plane and hurried up and released the 45 under a fraudulent name. I have no idea if that's true. It is, however, an amazing Rock n' Roll story, and for our purposes- just like the story with Christian Vander and Jannick Top having a magic battle from ancient keeps deep within the Dordogne- it's more fun to pretend it's true and ignore all the fuddy-duddies who want everything to have some kind of fucking rational explanation.

One other very provocative piece of music from this extraordinarily disturbing show was provided by the U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble- you really have to see these things yourself to get an idea of what we're talking about here. This is a project of the German avant-gardist Robert Rutman, who has- with the steel cello- produced something spooky and ethereal, wildly discordant but also astonishingly light- like electricity flowing thru the air, the "Bitter Suites" are captivating and mad, glowing and glowering, and when this piece I played builds to its climax...I simply do not have the language to describe the glorious cacophony of this Hellish crescendo. Stick around 'tilll the end of the show for sure to hear this one.

Ok, that's it for this week- next week it's off to Sweden for much, MUCH more mainstream RA, this one being #11 and simply being called Swedish Prog and Psych. Hope to see you then on Cascade Community Radio and here at the RA blog, cheers, - TKR

Setlist For Radio Anthrocide#10 Scared Yet?

1) Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind- Main Title Theme and "Rocky Mountains" from "The Shining".

2) Thomas Bangalter- "Stress" from the soundtrack to "Irreversible"

3) Univers Zero- "La Faulx"

4) Cosmos Factory- "An Old Castle Of Translyvania": A) Forest of the Death; B) The Cursed; C) Darkness of the World; D) An Old Castle of Transylvania

Saturday, July 17, 2010

At Left- The highly unsettling cover to one of the greatest albums ever made- Heldon's 1977 magnum opus of ice-cold fractured sound and existential fugue, Interface. The title track is a nineteen-minute epic which builds slowly until the sounds are eight-layers deep, forbiddingly complex and worthy of anything Bach attempted on "Die Kunst Der Fuge". Hear that masterpiece in this episode, below.

I have been very pleased to receive numerous requests that I make one of the early RA shows- #3 Progressive Electronic- available for download. Thanks to all the writers- who for some reason seem to be clustered in Peru, Chile and Argentina (thereby confirming my suspicion that South Americans are more highly evolved humans, at least musically)- for showing interest in what I felt made a good overview of one of my passions, which is really weird Electronic music. This is an early show, back when I was having problems with feedback when I tried to record my own voice; thus, there is zero talking, and what you have is essentially a three-hour mix of some really great proto-Electro, largely taken from the classic analog synth age but also extending into the 80's and 90's. Of particular interest to me is the second track by a wonderful Russian composer from Voronezh named Alexander Sobolev; "Gidrophobia" is the masterpiece from what is an outstanding and near-epic two disc set from 2005 called Phobia.The entire record and his follow up from two years ago, Zu, are fan-fucking-tastic examples of modern Berlin School interpretations of classic Kraftwerk-like compositional techniques; it's not your average Techno, is what I'm trying to say. As a side note- as a comlplete lark- I would love to find Mr. Sobolev and interview him; however, he seems to be a very quiet man, and I can find no page of his anywhere on the whole Internets. If any real Russian-music heads are reading and have a clue...I would be forever grateful for your assistance.

This was an amazingly fun show to put together, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Bride of Progressive Electronic will be coming next month some time, since I have a ton of this music and can't resist the urge to share- especially since it is clear lots of people have an interest in the parameters and scope made avail to the synthesizer by the Progressive ethos. - TKR

Friday, July 16, 2010

At Left: One of Toll's "friends" from the demon-haunted forest where he dwells somewhere deep in the primeval Baltic countryside, from the masterpiece of Estonian animation Suur Toll.Incidental music from this bizarre and terrifying bit of psychedelic "children's" cinema will be a part of our program tomorrow night. It's probably the best analog-synth soundtrack I've ever heard; and the film simply must be experienced to truly understand how brilliant Toll is.

Saturday night at 8pm PST DJ Timothy explores the outer limits of Progressive Hell with three spine-tingling hours of the most outre and bizarre music ever made in RA#10 Scared Yet? on Cascade Community Radio. French avant-garde madness, artistic collectives gone iniquitously wrong, Jimmy Page's lost film score for Kenneth Anger's Satanic-underground masterpiece Lucifer Rising, chilling RIO including perhaps the most evil song ever made and...as always, Igor Wakhevitch behind the world's most ferociously infernal bank of analog synthesizers. This show should be...interesting. - TKR

LISTENING TO RADIO ANTHROCIDE: A USER'S GUIDE

RA is a proud member of the Radio23 family of networks, appearing on Cascade Community Radio. You can listen to RA live, as it is broadcast, every Saturday night at 8pm PST by clicking on one of the media player links beneath the radio (I prefer ITunes, since I use that for everything- but I'm told they all work equally well). If, for some reason, you are not at home and don't want to miss so much as one second of the apocalypse, you can download any episode from the archives in this blog. You can subscribe to the broadcast using this link, and RSS will deliver it to you automatically- a really cool innovation:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/radioanthrocide

New episodes will appear the day after the original broadcast; there will be a friendly link in each blog entry which either streams or can be right-clicked and then saved to your media player. The files sound great; and each RA program is, of course, the definitive statement on whatever subject is being explored that week. You don't want to miss some of the gems DJ Timothy- with his vast erudition on all things Prog- brings to the fore in every show.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

What is there to say about the history of Psychedelic music in 20 million words or less? Some of the finest, most explosive, most introspective, most exploratory and most original music ever made- that's all. And, from a perusal of the setlist for this- an incredibly fun show for me to put together and play, by the way- you can see that there are things which truly are Universal: Rock music and drugs. This show is, of course, not meant to be definitve; there are many scenes (the African funk rhythms and a more deep inspection of Tropicalia, for instance, are just outside of my experience and competence) that aren't dealt with here, but hey- for three hours, you're not going to get much deeper behind your own eyeballs. I think this show could stand as a template for just how diverse and frenzied Psych music creation was in the glorious years thru the early 1970's.

Special attention is paid in RA#9 to a oft-overlooked phenomenon: Psychedelic Folk. Yes, there was such a thing- and Scandinavians were particularly bitten by the bug. I particularly encourage the listener to check out Arbete Och Fritid- the track "Ostpusten - Vastpusten" is the magnum opus, surely, but this is from a self-titled album from 1973 that is just absolutely perfect from first note to last. If you don't think things can get mighty goddamn weird in the context of a Folk-based quintet delving deeply into traditional Scandinavian peasant music...you simply have to check out Arbete. To me, when they hit their groove about 7 minutes into the song played here...it's the highlight of the show.

Around the world from Israel to South Africa with stops in Chile, Yugoslavia and India, New Zealand and Hungary, the awesome Anatolian Psych scene of Istanbul and- yes, it's true- a rare appearance by American bands on Radio Anthrocide...I think you'll find RA#9 to be a true epic flight into some of the best Pop music ever made- and also, some that is completely non-commercial and obviously the work of some deliriously demented and beautiful minds. I loved doing this show and will be doing one like it again, sometime in the next few months. - TKR

Denmark is one of the least-known and overlooked Progressive Rock scenes that I know of. However...I can assure you that for a country of it's diminutive size- and dominated by neighbors, though never culturally- it's almost unbelievable how much good music percolated from the Copenhagen scene in the years 1968-75. RA#8 is dedicated to exploring that scene.

The famed Progressive Rock Hall of Infamy Top 50 Prog Albums Ever list (surely to pass the equally-famed NWW-list in terms of influence and definitiveness, if not vitriol and slander from one Franz de Byl) is loaded with Danish contributions, but the ones I would like to emphasize are Alrune Rod (who opens the show) and Ache- if you see ANY album by these bands, my suggestion is to at least give it a listen. The first Alrunes record is a total freakout masterpiece; as for Ache, their first two records feature two side-long epics without a bad note in sight, and many other splendid moments from a band that lay astride two eras- Psych and Prog- and never blundered in moving gracefully between them.

This episode also includes contributions from Iceland- and that does not mean Sigur Ross and Bjork, either. For a nation of barely a quarter-million people (roughly the size of Lincoln, Nebraska- not exactly known for anything other than an illiterate horde of culturally-deprived football fanatics, by comparison) the Rock scene from Iceland is truly impressive. Hard Rock legends Icecross are rather well-known amongst those with a taste for Skald-ing Proto-Metal and Doom, but the traditional sounds of the island- from the wondrously named Hinn Islenski Fiursaflokkur (roughly, "A Pack of Icelandic Trolls")- also found vent in an era when, of course, you do pretty much anything musically due to the liberating vibe of "Prog". I also wanted to include Sume, from- seriously- Greenland. The track I picked is from a terrific Prog Folk album that has a heavy Country flavor to it, and this is no mere historical curiosity; the first true record sung in the actual Innuit-tinged Greenland tongue, and not the Danish dialect that is the "official" language, this album was a spark of the purest and most noble kind of patriotism- Greenlanders were so proud of this album, of the scant 50,000 people who make up the nation, TEN THOUSAND of them went out and bought Sumat. Imagine 60,000,000 people buying a single record album in a single year by an American band, and you get the idea of the kind of pride this band evoked in native Greenlanders. And as I've said...it's also a damn good album.

Denmark is probably second only to Sweden in terms of Scandi-Prog and Psych; we'll be hearing from the Swedes in a few weeks (a fabulous show brewing there, I promise) but until then, dig on this Tasty Danish and groove to the mighty sounds of Copenhagen. - TKR

While other countries played at witches, warlords and such- the French actually engaged in paranormal battles. Or so it is claimed.

The story goes that sometime in 1974 or 75, Magma- fresh off of Kohntarkosz, an amazing BBC-studios performance of same suite and with Christian Vander looking to take the Kobaian saga in whole new directions of artistic mutation, retired to the French countryside to work on a putative new album- I have heard the Dordogne, I have also heard the far more Celtic and magically-tinged Breton redoubt. Regardless, in the mad spirit that drove the band and its genius leader, Vander rented a castle on an imposing hillside overlooking a valley. Across that valley, none other than bassist (and the man arguably most responsible for developing the distinctive "Zeuhl" sound of grinding, growling and fulminating bass) Jannick Top had rented his own castle, though- as he found out to a fount of disappointment and ego-tinged rage- Vander's castle was higher by several dozen meters. Thus, so the theory goes, Top felt as if the maitre's power was greater than his own- and, obviously, his access to real estate agents. A titanic battle of magic ensued.

Vander and Top warred for weeks, casting spells, spewing venomous fusillades of incantation and hectoring energy, and finally- much to the horror of the band's manager- Top called the over-taxed business agent (who could ever have a harder job than managing Magma, for Christ's sakes?) and explained that Vander had conjured a mighty demon who forced him to tear his chest open...with his own bare hands! While skeptics can dismiss this as fantastical hokum, one thing is for sure: the last part is at least plausible. Anyone who has heard Jannick Top play must surely realize he has some of the strongest fingers in the world.

Jannick Top left the band soon after, not to play again with Christian until a series of definitive concerts in and around Paris in 1976. Is the story at all true? I hardly care; it is still my most favorite of all Progressive Rock anecdotes and fables of all time. What the fuck possibly more could you want from a Prog story- dueling titanic egos, an Olympian struggle atop Empyrean heights with magic, witchcraft, demons, and all of it ending in...one of the members leaving the band in a huff. If that's not Prog I'll kiss your ass.

The Playlist for Vive La France, which- up 'till now- I must say is my most favorite RA show so far. - TKR